


invisible lines (lead your way back to me)

by ifthebookdoesntsell



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Rejanis, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifthebookdoesntsell/pseuds/ifthebookdoesntsell
Summary: Seeing everything in monochrome-- however much she’s come to appreciate the nuances-- has made Janis long to meet her soulmate in a way that she swore she never would when she was younger. She knows that life is easier because it’s built this way-- there’s no need for heartbreak, since one kiss is all it takes to know what is temporary and what is forever-- but still, some days, it’s difficult to walk down the street and feel as though it’s stained with the color of simultaneous melancholy and calm.It may seem selfish, but Janis can’t help but long for a fuller existence, one where she can understand her father’s affinity for the changing of leaves in autumn, specifically when they turn scarlet.She doesn’t want calm. She wants brilliant, wants her heart to race when she sees the world, wants to know what it is to shatter colors across a canvas and know what they are.(Or, the one where Rejanis are soulmates, and they can only see the world in a monochrome of the other's eye color until they kiss for the first time, except there's twist.)
Relationships: Regina George/Janis Sarkisian
Comments: 13
Kudos: 82





	invisible lines (lead your way back to me)

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all. this idea came to me a few days ago, and i'm not sure if it's been done before (honestly, i haven't read anything outside of the mean girls fandom in a long.... long time, and i know it hasn't been done here so that's my only basis of knowledge lmao), but i hope you like it even if you've read something similar! i've never written a soulmates au, even though one of my favorite fics of all time is one, so i hope i've done it justice. 
> 
> you can listen to a playlist i made that reminds me of this story [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zpdxaklqpLu1Ej98uvffs?si=mT2fWyU2SeebIIdhAdiuUQ). 
> 
> (title from isohel by EDEN)

Ever since Janis could remember, everything’s been blue. She’s thirteen, and it helps keep life simple. She knows every kind, what each one looks like on her canvases, which shades are called what. She has her favorites, and the ones that make her skin crawl.

Cyan, she despises the most. It hurts her eyes. Her father agrees; he told her once that the first time he saw it, his eyes burned. 

She’s lucky to have her parents, since they help guide her along, tell her what the world actually looks like. 

Her dad tells her that her canvases she’s painting on aren’t actually cornflower, but white, and that her favorite shirt is actually purple, and the sky-- which appears in one of Janis’ favorite shades-- _is_ actually the brilliant hue that she sees. 

Her mom organizes her supplies, placing each colored paint and pencil and marker into a specific box so her daughter doesn’t get confused, and in the beginning, Janis is appreciative. But as time goes on, she begins to hate the simplicity of it all; she wants to see her art as it should be-- as her teachers and parents see it when they tell her it’s beautiful. 

Janis wants to see the world in all of its imperfect, messy glory. 

Seeing everything in monochrome-- however much she’s come to appreciate the nuances-- has made her long to meet her soulmate in a way that she swore she never would when she was younger. She knows that life is easier because it’s built like this-- there’s no need for heartbreak, since one kiss is all it takes to know what is temporary and what is forever-- but still, some days, it’s difficult to walk down the street and feel as though it’s stained with the color of simultaneous melancholy and calm. 

It may seem selfish, but Janis can’t help but long for a fuller existence, one where she can understand her father’s affinity for the changing of leaves in autumn, specifically when they turn scarlet. 

She doesn’t want calm. She wants brilliant, wants her heart to race when she sees the world, wants to know what it is to shatter colors across a canvas and know what they are.

She wants to understand why her mother is overcome when she paints their trip to the seaside, why Jennifer compliments the use of yellows and oranges, runs her fingers over the perfectly detailed sand once it’s dried. She wants to know what ink is staining her palm as she drags her left hand across the page, trying to take notes. 

Janis wants to know the brown in her own eyes, wants to understand why people say that colors make life beautiful, worthwhile, why everybody who’s met their soulmate says that the spectrum of the rainbow alone tells stories in a way that words never could. 

Nevertheless, she doesn’t see anything but blue until she’s fifteen. 

***

Janis is fifteen when her eyes flip open to a forest green. It’s disorienting. 

All of it-- everything she’d catalogued in the color she had resigned herself to live with maybe forever-- is different. Her whole life has been characterized in blues, and now, with this newness in every direction, excitement and fear ball up into one. 

Most of all, she’s unsure what it means, whether she should be afraid. She wonders if her soulmate is alright, and she already misses seeing the sky properly when she looks out her window. She misses the brilliance of the lake not far away, the brightness of it that her father told her means that it matches the pigmentation of her soulmate’s irises.

Now, she’s not so sure what their eye color is, if tragedy occurred, if her soulmate is in pain or even if there’s been an accident and they can no longer see. 

Her gaze shifts around her bedroom for the better of five minutes, always coming back to herself in the mirror, what she looks like tinted green. 

Finally, her worry outweighs her wonder, and she barges into the living room. Surprisingly, her parents don’t seem at all bothered, instead telling her that her soulmate probably put contact lenses in as to give Janis a richer viewpoint of the world. They tell her that though the system often works, there’s no real guarantee that she’ll ever meet her soulmate, and clearly whoever they are is trying to be kind, to give Janis the opportunity to experience every color that she can in case they never cross paths. 

It seems silly to Janis. The solution couldn’t be that easy.

Still, she can’t deny that she’s seeing green, can’t deny the shock that her system has gone through in the last few hours.

She can finally see what trees are really supposed to look like, what shade their front lawn is. She can now understand why it’s one of her mom’s favorites: there’s a vibrancy about it, a liveliness. 

With the world in green, Janis understands living a bit more, understands, suddenly, why their house plants stretch toward sunlight. She understands more because, now, she gets the little things, too, like why her mom gets annoyed when her dad gets grass stains on his pants, or why the garden needs to be watered each day. 

Janis looks out the window, and instead of being disappointed about not seeing the lake as she should, she appreciates how much more _alive_ the world feels. 

In this moment, she realizes that green is wonderful, that she loves it, loves seeing the emerald of the pendant on the necklace her father bought for her mother for their twentieth wedding anniversary, loves finally knowing what her acrylic paint called _mint_ actually looks like. 

Seeing green also makes Janis realize that she’s fallen for her soulmate a bit. She’s unsure exactly when it happened-- maybe it was after realizing the brilliant color of their eyes-- but now, knowing they thought of her, _wanted_ to show her something, spent the time and the money to show her a bit more of the world, she finds herself loving somebody whose face she’s never even seen. 

She guesses that being able to see what they wanted to show her is enough. 

Janis wonders if her soulmate could tell how she was feeling: trapped, longing. She wonders if they have a soft voice, if they’ve used it to ask the stars if they’ll meet their One just as Janis has. She wonders if they’ve lied awake at night, seen the world in all the shades of brown from amber to dirt and felt the same yearning in their heart to see what the world _really_ wanted them to look like, whether they feel like something is missing, too, like every second there’s a chasm in their chest that can’t be filled until they meet. Janis wonders if it’s normal to feel this way. 

Is it weird to miss somebody she’s never met? Is it weird to fall in love with the world through the colors that some faceless, nameless person is showing her? 

She closes her eyes and the pine hue of her father’s gentle gaze stays burned into her memory. 

Janis decides she doesn’t care if it’s weird. Besides, the emptiness in her chest already feels a bit more filled knowing that her soulmate is thinking of her. It makes her fall a little harder. 

She hopes they feel the same way. 

Green is the only new color she’s seen, and it only lasts for a few days. 

Still, it changes everything.

***

Janis is sixteen when she wakes one morning to clear pink skies and paintings that were shades of blue now washed out in magenta and rose. She’d figured her soulmate had run out of green contacts and was going to order more, but now, she’s glad that they tried something new. 

She enjoys the vibrancy of it, how mesmerizing it is to see the clouds move across the sky, carnation fluff atop a thulian backdrop. 

When she looks it up, pink supposedly is telling of love. Janis hopes it isn’t wishful thinking to wonder if whoever is out there is trying to tell her something. 

***

When she’s seventeen, she has her first kiss, and the whole world is yellow. 

The girl isn’t her soulmate-- they both already know that because of their natural eye colors-- but the kiss itself is nice enough. Janis doesn’t totally get the hype, even if it is nice to be close to someone. It’s afternoon and light is streaming through the windows and it’s not perfect but Janis still likes seeing how the sun’s patterns dapple on the other girl’s cheek. 

It’s a good reference point for her next painting. 

Janis loves yellow much more than green or pink. And it’s not because it reminds her of the kiss. 

For some reason, there’s something deeper; it’s as if there’s some part of her soulmate that’s golden, that’s glowing and perfect. She’s unsure, but her mother said it could be as simple as blonde hair. 

Janis counts that down as the third thing she knows about her soulmate, the first being the blue in their eyes, and the second being how utterly lovable they are. 

Another reason Janis loves yellow is because she can now awaken to the sunrise, to a mix of sepia and canary decorating her ceiling, to the flare of the sun on a cream colored sea. She tries to commit it to memory, just in case the contacts run out, painting and sketching every nuance that catches her eye. 

Her parents tell her there are other tones that appear at dawn and dusk, but for now, Janis is just content with the shades she can see, to watch the way the rays emanate from the fiery orb she can finally see clearly, the way warmth and hope drip from it like honey. 

For two weeks, the world stays this way, drenched in light, butterscotch, and dandelion. She’s fascinated by it, how it makes her heart soar, how it’s blinding and darker than words can describe all at once, how the thought of watching the sun rise in all of its goodness with somebody she loves one day makes her breath catch in her throat. 

Her parents tell her that the feeling is called being happy. If yellow makes her this happy now, Janis can only imagine what it would mean if her soulmate does have locks that are so platinum that they glow. 

She bets that they’re the most beautiful person in the world. 

***

Janis spends exactly one day unable to see anything but white. 

It shocks her more than anything, but when she calls for her parents, worried that something happened, all they do is laugh. 

“They probably got bored of brown and decided to let you know about it,” her father tells her. “God knows I got bored of seeing everything like that before I finally got to kiss your mom!” 

“Robert!” 

Though Janis can’t see them, she can imagine the glee on her dad’s face, can imagine the fake offense her mother takes. 

(The next day, she makes a note in blue on the inside flap of her notebook to tell her soulmate one day that the prank was rather funny.

A few months later, she writes another to thank them for giving her one of her last good memories with her father before everything went to hell while the world was red.) 

***

Janis despises the entirety of red’s spectrum even more than cyan. 

For all her life, she’s wanted to see it for herself, wanted to understand why people loved it, wanted to know why it kicked off the rainbow. She’s wanted to have the color near her birthday, to be able to appreciate Christmas decorations, to hang the lights in the right direction on the first try, to finally see the coral of her mother’s favorite sweater. She’s dreamt of imagining her soulmate in a Santa hat and finally knowing the proper shade of red for it, dreamt of presents and cookies, and maybe meeting them. 

She wishes they were here right now. They would know what to say. 

Instead, all Janis can think is that red is the worst color ever. 

It’s the worst because when she opens her eyes, she doesn’t see decorations, and her soulmate definitely isn’t with her. It’s the worst because it’s not even winter. It’s autumn-- her dad’s favorite season-- and she would finally be able to see the changing leaves. But instead, Robert is in a hospital bed drowning in sheets that appear burgundy. 

It’s the worst because it enables her anger, because it shows her the tint of the blood entering her dad through an IV, because she can see how irritated her mom’s eyes are from lack of sleep and tears. 

She hates how it brings out the cruelty in her, forces rage to the front of her mind, makes her swallow everything she wants to tell the doctors and nurses to the point that the fury balls up in her stomach and makes her feel sick. 

Everywhere she looks, the world is bloodstained, and while the way dawn blushes as it starts to glow is gorgeous, Janis wishes she could experience it with her father, wishes she could listen to him talk about some theory about sunsets again for hours, show him the monochromatic painting she would have done for red had the situation been different. 

But now, none of that is possible. She’s aware that her dad is dying, and it makes her hate the color of her world just a little more, because on one of his strong days, Robert tells her again that it’s his favorite, that it has been ever since their family took a camping trip when Janis was young and he took a photograph of her-- so young and happy-- against the trees tinged with the hint of fall. All the while, he begs her to go outside, to appreciate nature’s beauty, to paint it in all of its glory-- and in perfect accuracy-- while she still can. 

Janis refuses. She can’t fathom leaving his side, not now. She doesn’t get to see what the world looks like, doesn’t get to catalogue the little details like she normally would, but for once, she doesn’t care. 

More than anything, it all just hurts. It hurts to see four red walls, to see what shade cherry Jell-O comes in for the first time in a hospital while she sits next to her father and tries to feed him a bite. It hurts when a nurse comes in to do her daily morning check and gives her a smile as best she can, as though she’s apologizing for something that hasn’t even happened yet. 

As the days go by, Janis’ vision seems to tunnel; everything blinks with warning signs, and the day it all falls apart, she feels like she should have known by the currant undertones she’s been seeing. 

She awakens to her mother’s quiet crying, and though the monitor is still beeping rhythmically, Janis knows something is wrong. She doesn’t quite know what, but when the nurse enters, she eavesdrops, and her heart is in her throat when she hears her mom telling the other woman that colors she normally sees are starting to slip away, which means-- 

Robert Sarkisian passes two weeks before Thanksgiving, after every color except green has faded from Jennifer’s vision. The flatline is suffocating, but worse is her mother, washed out in merlot, sobbing in her arms, whispering that all the color is gone, that she can’t even see the pine of her husband’s eyes any longer. 

Janis quivers but tries to remain strong, sits in her red chair, holding her red mother, crying red tears. The red nurse turns off the red monitor, and then, her father is being wheeled away. 

He’s the only thing that seems to be colorless. 

Her mother cries harder. 

And quietly, doubtfully, painfully, Janis wonders if meeting her soulmate would really be worth it if it ends like this. 

(Eventually, she learns that yes, it is; but now, holding her mom, she can’t help but contemplate what it all means.)

***

When Janis meets her for the first time, the world is painted grey, and surprisingly, she loves it. 

She loves the absence of brightness, of blinding glows she’s never seen before. It gives her time to focus, to see the details, and the moment she sees the pretty girl in her literature lecture sitting alone, she knows she has to talk to her. 

For some reason, she seems to be the only person Janis can look at, even in a room filled with new acquaintances and possible friends. The grey washes them out, centers her in on perhaps the most beautiful creation she’s ever seen as an artist. 

She looks as if she’s made of silver, strong and shining but still modest in her presentation. She lights up at something she wrote, her lip curling in perfect concentration, and the sight of it makes Janis’ pulse quicken. 

She watches as the girl wards off anybody who tries to become her desk partner, but still, the artist approaches, undeterred, and the glare she receives only serves to make her smile. 

There’s an undeniable attraction, and maybe it’s a little forward, but all Janis wants to know is where the callouses on the girl’s right hand come from, if she celebrates Christmas, if all these little features she’s able to notice for the first time are as brilliant in yellow, glowing and wonderful, as they are when they’re so clearly defined. She wants to know what color this girl sees the world in, if she’s hilarious enough to put in white contacts in a fit of annoyance because she doesn’t like seeing the world in brown. 

The girl’s hair is outlined in soft graphite by Janis’ vision-- the kind she uses the draw-- and her eyes are gentle yet stormy; they make Janis think of the lake back home, though she isn’t sure why. All she knows is that she would happily drown in them. 

“Is this seat taken?” 

Janis braces for impact immediately when she sees the girl lift her head, clearly ready to tell her off, but, surprisingly, when she spots Janis, she doesn’t seem quite as ready for an argument as before. It’s unclear what sparks the change in demeanor. Maybe it’s the crow’s feet next to Janis’ eyes, or the way she looks extremely earnest, but it doesn’t matter because the girl shakes her head and points for her to sit down. 

For a brief second, it’s almost as if they’re going to exchange words before pretty lips detailed in steel clamp shut, clearly thinking better of speaking. 

Ever persistent, Janis makes the first move. 

“My name’s Janis,” she tells her, her foot tapping under the table. Smoky eyes move over her, and normally, it would make her feel unnerved, but now, under the gaze of this stranger, she already feels like somehow they know each other. It’s an odd feeling, but despite the plainness of this grey world she’s seeing, despite the fact that she only ever thought color could make her warm to the fingertips, with this girl in front of her, the vacancy in Janis’ chest feels like it’s being filled slightly. “What’s yours?” 

“What’s my what?” 

Janis snorts quietly. Her heart stops a little when she thinks hears the girl’s breath stutter at the sound of her laughter. Then again, that could just be what she wants to see. 

“What’s your name?” 

A pause. Janis’ breath shortens as she waits. 

“Regina.” The girl reaches out her hand for a shake. “My name is Regina.” 

_Regina._

Janis smiles at the sound of it, tests the name out on her tongue. 

“Regina,” she says back. “I like it.” It’s beautiful and somehow sweet, and it’s a bit amusing to know that this girl who has successfully scared away half of the class has a name that Janis knows would look and sound gorgeous in any shade. “It’s pretty.”

Regina’s cheeks darken to pewter, and Janis grins back at her, able to imagine the pink that would be spreading across her cheeks. 

They spend the rest of the class stealing glances at each other-- Regina vehemently denying that she’s looking any time Janis raises an eyebrow despite the fact that her lips twitch in what’s refusing to truly be a smile-- and finally, when the ninety minutes are nearly up, Janis takes a deep breath and writes in her nicest penmanship: ‘ _you’re just as pretty as your name,’_ before adding her phone number and drawing a quick sketch of Regina, outlined in pen and shaded in with graphite, just as she appeared when Janis first laid eyes on her. 

She slips the note across the desk as she gets up, heart beating out of her chest. For a moment, she forces herself to look forward, but as she rounds towards the door, Janis looks back at Regina, just to get a glimpse, and it’s so worth it because of the blush on her cheeks that Janis knows is likely carnation, because of her smile, how she knows it’s probably blindingly white, because of the way Regina twirls a strand of her hair as she reads the note again, and Janis can almost imagine that it’s glowing, blonde and brilliant. 

Janis never knew she could feel this much. She doesn’t know exactly what these new emotions are, but she sure knows that they’re beautiful. 

Regina is beautiful. 

***

Regina is perfect in blue. In green, she makes Janis’ pulse quicken with how alive she seems. Washed out in pink, the flush on her cheeks from a compliment makes her even more gorgeous than Janis thought possible. And in yellow, Regina is absolutely radiant. 

Beyond comprehension. 

In yellow, Regina brightens every room, graces wherever she is with a touch and a smile so effulgent, so luminescent, that Janis feels like she’s melting just the tiniest bit, thinks that perhaps this is Regina’s best color. 

She’s quickly disproven. 

Because in orange, the teasing nature of Regina being _almost_ golden, is enough to drive Janis mad. Her mother once told her it was like yellow, only darker, that it was many people’s least favorite color, but Janis has never been one to listen to what others thought. 

In all honesty, Janis loves orange. She loves how Regina’s eyes still glimmer, how it makes her think of her father and sunrises, how when she’s with Regina, basking in the day’s normal golden hour that turns her marigold instead, she doesn’t even care about the flicker and flare of the sunset she’s wanted to see properly for so long. All she cares about is looking at the other girl, seeing the way the sun casts a sandstone glow behind her. 

They’ve been seeing more of each other, getting coffee every week, each time with Janis’ vision a different color. It’s been difficult, but after three long weeks, she convinces Regina to actually use her phone number, and she can’t help the smile that overtakes her when she sees a text asking her to come over to study. 

The excuse is that they’re both lonely; the excuse is that Regina doesn’t get the material, though they both know that’s untrue; the excuse is that Janis needs to not draw all class and actually learn. 

Of course, they don’t end up studying, not in the slightest. Instead, Regina tries to show Janis one of her favorite 80’s movies, and Janis rolls her eyes, opens Netflix, and shows the girl everything she’s been missing. 

Janis queues up her favorite show, but in the end, she has more fun watching Regina-- coated in bronze-- laughing at the jokes, trying not to grow overcome during emotional moments. 

She doesn’t know what makes her interrupt. She doesn’t know why she decides to speak. 

Well, she does. 

It’s the way Regina looks at here. It’s the wondering, the attraction, the way her entire being seems to vibrate when their fingers so much as brush. It’s the years of waiting, of wanting, of searching. It’s the weeks of _knowing,_ of trying to find a way to see if she’s right. 

“How many colors have you seen?” Janis asks in the middle of an episode of Killing Eve, too fiery to be just curious. 

She didn’t want to ask like this. She wanted to go slow, to figure herself out more, to understand why her heart races when Regina is near, why she feels just a little more whole when their eyes meet. 

But now, it’s too late, and the words are out of her mouth, and Regina seems to understand what she’s saying at the same time Janis is experiencing every emotion at the same time, and she wonders if this is what seeing a world filled with color may be like. 

“You’ve seen more than one?” 

Janis nods. 

“Have you?” Her voice quivers, and suddenly she understands the nuances of orange, why people dislike it.

It’s starting to impede her vision, her senses, forcing her deeper into her thoughts until suddenly, she’s more afraid than she ever has been, afraid that this was all a mistake, afraid that she’s projecting her feelings, afraid that the organ in her chest may just stop if she’s wrong, if these emotions are caused by somebody she’s not destined to spend forever with. 

“No,” Regina replies quietly, forcing Janis away from the terrifying jaws of her own anxiety. Irises that appear auburn study her, move over her face, try to make sense of all the little details that they’re putting together. If Janis decides on optimism, she can see desire in them. “Though, I think sometimes, they’re there. Like, my soulmate is seeing something, and if they’re enjoying it, I’m enjoying it, and if they don’t, I can feel that too.”

The words are searching, hopeful, offering of an answer without overtly saying so. 

“Which ones do they like?” Janis asks at a whisper, gently moving nearer to Regina, so close that their hands are touching, and they both feel a shock that’s quietly the most brilliant thing either of them have ever felt. “Which ones do they hate?”

She has to ask both. She has to be sure. 

Regina takes a deep breath. It’s simultaneously the loudest and softest thing Janis has ever heard. 

“Well, I know they hate red,” she starts, heart in her throat. “Though I was going through a rough time then, too, so I’m not sure which one of us despises it more.” Her hand inches towards Janis’ until their fingers are just barely tangled, one on top of their other. 

They’re halfway to being sure.

“And their favorites?” 

Regina hesitates, and Janis feels like she’s really _seeing_ her for the first time: barely golden, beautiful, a billion little pieces struggling to remain one, looking for somebody to glue them in place permanently, and utterly terrified that maybe something went wrong, that maybe this isn’t what she thinks. 

Janis looks at her encouragingly, hoping that Regina can see just how earnest the brown of her eyes is. 

“I’m not really sure,” the girl starts, swallowing hard. “I used to think yellow, but they also seem to like grey. Grey was a good day.” 

Janis’ heart drops. Regina’s eyes are pleading for her to ask what they’re both thinking. 

“When was that?” It’s tentative, barely there, and yet, infinite. They’re both shaking, and Janis wonders if soulmate links work the same way isohels do, whether they feel the same things, the same way the sunlight reaches everything along its assigned line. 

She wonders if Regina can feel her heartbeat. 

She wonders if Regina can feel _her._

“The first day.” A tangerine sunset decorates the dorm; a beam falls across their laps. Regina trembles before she speaks again. “The day we met.” 

Janis is suddenly overcome with the need to kiss her. She’s thought about it before, wondered even what it would feel like. But now, she needs it like she needs breath after a swim, needs it like the sand needs the sea. 

And the crazy thing is that Janis doesn’t want to kiss Regina because she wants to see a rainbow, or to confirm that she’s her soulmate. Janis wants to kiss Regina because she’s irrevocably in love with her. She wants to kiss her because she likes the way Regina’s lip curls into a smile, likes the way she found herself transfixed by those eyes before she knew they might mean something. She wants to kiss her because she wants to know what Regina’s gloss tastes like, because Regina makes her feel safe, because Regina makes her feel everything, makes her see every color even though she knows that isn’t actually possible, not yet. 

“What color contacts are you wearing?” 

Regina opens her mouth to reply, leaning forward, lips inviting and soft, but she isn’t able to answer, isn’t even able to press forward the final millimeter to kiss Janis, because their friends knock on the door, interrupt the moment, and before either of them know it, they’re out the door, roped into getting dinner.

They spend the night stealing glances at each other, and when Regina slips her hand into Janis’ briefly as they get off the train and walk back toward their dorm building, the brunette is suddenly fully aware of what she’s living for, suddenly orange is her favorite. 

She hopes Regina knows that. 

She hopes Regina can feel it, knows that this is the best day of her life, that nothing will ever top the way she’s almost sure that she can consider herself whole for the first time. 

***

Janis finally kisses Regina on the day just before winter begins, and everything is blue once more. 

It’s perfect. 

Janis kisses Regina without a single moment of hesitation. Janis kisses Regina in her bed, leaning over, a hand braced on the mattress and the other on the other girl’s cheek. She kisses her hard, all the pent up yearning, all the emptiness she’s felt, all of the loneliness, poured into it. 

Janis kisses Regina because she can’t imagine not, because it’s been a week since their almost confirmation, because the world seems to have opened up, because she wants to do it on a day where she can look into Regina’s eyes and know they won’t change regardless of what happens. 

She kisses Regina fervently, ardently, adoringly, her pulse so quick that she’s afraid her heart might just jump out of her chest. This moment feels redefining in its beauty, so flawless and intense that Janis could never do it justice on the canvas. 

Everything has gone from existence to living, from simple to so complex that it’s almost dizzying, from lonely to forever linked. 

Regina kisses her back, and Janis finds herself simultaneously losing her balance and feeling the most grounded she has in her whole life. The hold they’ve got on each other is gentle, and for the first time, Janis feels discovered, feels known. 

She feels Regina’s fingers tangling in her hair, and she smiles, even more determined to kiss back with zero trepidation, to communicate everything that’s happened in the last eighteen years in this short moment of forever. 

Her hands grasp Regina’s hips as they finally have to come up for oxygen, and for a second, she doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t open them not because she’s unsure; she knows that this is meant to be. She doesn’t open them because she needs to prepare, needs to prepare to see the world for the first time, needs to prepare to see Regina, to know if she really is the most beautiful entity in the whole universe. 

She blindly reaches down to brush her lips against Regina’s one last time in this monochrome world, to bask in the liminality of it for one more brief infinity. She hopes it communicates that she's terrified and excited and hopeful and in awe. She hopes it communicates that she knows this is more than just a kiss, that this is their whole life running out in front of them. 

Janis’ breath catches in her throat at the thought. 

_Their whole life._

Suddenly, she needs to see Regina. For real. 

Without any more preamble, she flips her eyes open, and the girl is already staring back at her. 

Her heart stops. 

The world stops. There’s so much so look at. 

Colors pull into view. 

Irises worth drowning in. Golden locks. A pretty blush. 

Janis’ eyes travel everywhere. 

_Fuck._ Regina is gorgeous. 

**Author's Note:**

> sooo what did you think? if you enjoyed, consider leaving me a comment and/or a kudo down below. knowing people like what i'm putting out makes me smile :) 
> 
> as always, i'm @ifthebookdoesntsell on tumblr. my askbox is always open for whatever is on your mind.
> 
> be safe x


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